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Thursday, December 8, 2016

HOSPITALITY SPRINGS

“OH, THERE HAVE BEEN many lively nights around this table down
through the centuries,” says our Ballyvolane host, Justin Green, fondly patting
the mahogany as dinner is served. My fellow guests at Ballyvolane are a family
of five Chinese Americans on a whirlwind tour of Europe in celebration of an
important birthday for Kitchi, their matriarch.

The long rays of an Irish summer sunset dapple the red,
shamrock patterned walls of the dining room. Through broad windows, we glimpse
Friesian cattle grazing in buttercup-filled meadows and, in a distant haze, the
rippling hills of East Cork. “Ballyvolane” translates as “place of the
springing heifer” and, sure enough, a young cow performs a dutiful skip.

Originally built for Sir Richard Pyne, a lord chief justice
of Ireland, and completed in 1728, th wisteria-draped Ballyvolane got an
Italianate makeover in 1847 and is now a flagship of Hidden Ireland, a group of
family-owned Irish castles, manors, and mansions that have opened their doors
to paying guests. One of the quirky pleasures of Hidden Ireland hospitality is
that all guests dine together.

Kitchi’s family turn out to be great fun. It’s the last
night of their grand tour, and the banter runs ceaselessly. We contrast the
lives of the Chinese and Irish emigrants who built North America’s railroads.
We compare Oliver Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland with China’s Cultural
Revolution.

Justin gamely fields questions and spins fresh ones back.
Alongside his wife, Jenny, he’s racked up nearly 20 years of looking after
guests at hotels and resorts in Hong Kong. Dubai, and Bali, before returning to
southwest Ireland to take on the family home in 2004. In addition to the six
cozy guest rooms in the main house, the Greens offer furnished luxury tents for
rent on the estate grounds in summer. This evening, while Justin hosts the
table, Jenny is cooking in the kitchen.

Twelve-year-old Toby Green, the eldest of their three
children, has already built up an impressive international network of yunger
Ballyvolane guests. “He has pen pals all over the world,” says Justin.

As the evening draws to a close, Kitchi gives her verdict on
the trip: “For me, the big highlights has been…feeding the piglets this
morning.

The piglets are five saddlebacks that snuffle in a stable
adjoining the main house. With their mother and some Muscovy ducks, they are
the principal beneficiaries of any excess scraps from the Ballyvolane kitchen.

In fact, the kitchen has vaulted Ballyvolane into the upper
ranks of Ireland’s places to stay. Homegrown or locally sources ingredients
drive the menus, including the succulent halibut we are eating, recently hooked
by a fisherman on the Beara Peininsula. All fruits and vegetables come from a
three-acre garden bordered by 14-foot-high sandstone walls. Orderly rows yield
asparagus, sea kale, spring onion, rainbow chard, beetroot, and potato. And
rhubab-which Justin so deftly converted into a rhubarb martini when I went for
a stroll before dinner, passing under a glorious arch of laburnum that leads to
terraced gardens and a croquet lawn with a dovecote at its center. The ground
beneath roll out a seasonal carpet-snow drops in February, then daffodils,
bluebells, rhododendrons, azaleas, and camellias over the ensuing months.

The following day, Kitchi tells me she feels as though she
has “just stayed with friends.” Justin isn’t surprised. “The advantage of
opening up only a handful of bedrooms is that you can give guests playing an
old Percy French music hall tune. Silhouetted between Ionic pillars and classic
statuary in a hall the color of burnt orange, he’s still playing when the next
guests arrive.